These Delights (6 page)

“
That’s very ungallant, Lou,” said Pauline severely. “Anyway, perhaps it was his second-best.”

“We’d better be going down again,” laughed Luke. ‘It’s getting on for lunch-time.”

But once on the Hoe again, disaster overtook them. Bibi, who had not enjoyed Smeaton’s Tower, struggled suddenly and leapt from Lou’s arms, bounding away, terrified, on to the grass. Two dogs immediately gave hot pursuit and instantly there was uproar. Lou burst into tears, Vicky and Pauline shrieked: “He will be killed! Bibi will be killed!” and all three started to run shouting wildly to passers-by to join in the rescue.

The chase was long and noisy. It seemed to Luke that people had sprung from nowhere, and most of them were running with no idea of the reason. At last, when the dogs, now joined by other dogs, had been headed, and yelled at, and generally diverted, Bibi was cornered by a little man in a bowler hat, who held him up by the ears with some sally which provoked a shout of laughter. Lou received the rabbit with a torrent of gratitude all in French, his English deserting him in such a crisis, while Vicky and Pauline, the tears streaming down their faces, explained to everyone Bibi’s life history, and were quite ready to embark on their own, when Luke, relieved, annoyed and embarrassed, ordered all three back to the car.

“And next time you come out with me,” he said with firmness, “you leave that rabbit at home.”

They were all four very hot, and Luke, observing their downcast faces, relented and took them to eat ices.

“But Bibi stays in the car,” he told them, and was answered by a meek chorus of: “Yes, Cousin Luke.” Only Lou muttered,
sotto voce,
that Bibi’s nerves were upset and he would like an ice, too.

“Behave yourself, Lou,” said Vicky sternly. “We are the guests of ou
r
cousin and should do as he says.”

“Very laudable,” grinned Luke, as they found a table in the window, “but it sounds rather like the pen of my aunt
.
Suppose you just call me Luke. The ‘cousin’ makes me feel elderly.”

“Oh, but you are not elderly,” said Vicky quickly. “We were all so surprised. We thought you would be quite middle-aged, but you have not even grey in your hair. I would say you were quite ten years younger than Hercule Dupont, wouldn’t you, Pauline?
”

“Oh, quite,” said Pauline, nodding solemnly, “and he is thin and tall, too—slim, I should say. It is a great help.”

“Thank you,” said Luke with meekness. “Now, what are you all going to have? Vanilla, strawberry, or coffee?”

There was a long and earnest discussion during which they all three changed their minds several times, but it happened that there was only vanilla ice left, so as Lou remarked, they might have saved the argument.

“But it’s so nice to discuss things, even if it is only ices,” said Vicky happily. “Don’t you like to discuss things, Cousin—I mean, Luke?”

“Yes, Vicky,” he said with a smile. “When it
is
a discussion and not just a one-sided argument.”

The thought of Diana passed through his mind, and he looked up with a guilty start when a voice suddenly hailed him by name.

“Hullo, Sir Harry!
”
he said. “I didn’t know ices were one of your weaknesses.”

The grey-haired, red-faced man who had stopped by their table winked at Pauline.

“I love ‘em,” he said in conspiratorial tones. “I often slip in on my own and have one when I’m in town. Are these the young
protégées
we have heard so much about?”

“
Yes, these are my cousins—Vicky, Pauline, Lou—Sir Harry Sale, Diana’s father,” said Luke. “Won’t you join us, Sir Harry?”

“No, no, I’m on my way out,” Sir Harry said. “I couldn’t eat two, it would spoil my lunch and Diana would want to know what I’ve been up to.” He examined Vicky with an appreciative eye. “But this young lady is no child.”

Vicky gave him her wide smile.

“Oh, no, I am nineteen,” she said. “Our cousin had forgotten. He thought Pauline was the eldest—he had left me out altogether. Wasn’t that a surprise for him?”

“Seems to have been a surprise for everyone,” Sir Harry grunted, and suddenly grinned. “You must come and see us, my dear. I would like to show you my roses. I have a new Caroline Testout which is very fine, very fine indeed.”

“Caroline Testout
...”
Vicky lingered over the name. “That is a lovely name. Is it pink?”

“Yes,”
he
said, his eyes lighting with interest. “But how did you know?”

“It
sounded
pink,” she said
.

Lou asked carefully:

“Would you like to see Bibi?”

“Bibi?”

“Our rabbit. He is very handsome.”

“What, here?” Sir Harry looked at their laps and under the tables with a great show of surprise.

“He’s in the car,” said Lou. “I could easily fetch him.”

“No, Lou.” Luke was firm. “We’ve had enough for one day. I’m not risking a rep
e
t
i
tion of this morning’s chase in here.”

Sir Harry looked enquiring, so they all three described Bibi’s escapade with much wealth of expression and many gestures. Sir Harry chuckled and clapped Luke on the shoulder.

“Charming young people, charming,” he said. “Bring them over to see us soon, Luke. Any messages for Diana?”

“Give her my love and tell her I’ll ring her up this evening,” Luke replied, and the older man nodded to them all and went out.

“He’s nice,” said Pauline approvingly. “A kind man, I should say.”

“He’s nicer than his daughter,” Lou remarked with thoughtless candor.

“Lou, that’s not polite,” reproved Vicky.

“Didn’t you like Diana?” Luke asked, amused.

“We don’t really know her,” said Pauline politely. “She is very handsome, but I think she is cold.”

“You said that last night about
—”
began Lou, but
Vicky cut in hastily:

“You will not repeat
all
our conversations, I hope, Lou.”

Luke looked enquiring, but she avoided his eye, and drew Pauline’s attention to something passing in the street.

Luke paid the bill and they drove to the station to collect the suitcase.

“It weighs about half a ton,” he laughed, heaving it into the boot. “Have you brought all the latest Paris fashions with you?”

“We have very few clothes. It is Lou’s music that weighs,” Vicky told him apologetically.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Luke. “We had better call in at a music shop and get them to send a tuner out. I should think our old piano is pretty bad.”

They got back to the farm very late for lunch, and Corky, complaining that his treacle pud was spoilt, sent them firmly upstairs to wash.

“Did you enjoy your morning?” Hester asked.

“It was enjoyable, but exhausting,” said Luke. “I think I shall take them out one at a time in future.”

“Did you remember my seed catalogues?”

He grinned ruefully.

“Clean forgot them,
I’
m afraid. But one is liable to forget things when out with the
Jordan
s, I find. We met Sir Harry, who seemed rather taken with the children—oh, and there’s a man coming out tomorrow to tune the piano. Will you try and remind me this evening to ring up Diana?”

She raised her eyebrows slightly, but only said she would try to remember, and they might as well start lunch.

After lunch they followed Luke round the farm, enquiring about everything, comparing English methods of farming with French, to the interest of Tom Bowden, who thought Vicky was a ‘proper little maid’ and answered all her questions with untiring patience.

“We live in a town now,” she explained. “When we were in Algeria we were in the country, but when things got bad we went to France, and one so soon forgets the other life, don’t you think?”

“Well, I’ve never lived in towns,” Tom said, “but I don’t think I should like it for long. Farming’s my world and the seasons following each other is life enough for me, though there’s some as finds it dull. But if you look there’s
summat happening all the time. In the autumn the preparation of the ground and the ploughing, and the first frosts that look so pretty, and the leaves and the bracken turning
—”

“And in winter,” broke in Vicky eagerly, “wood fires, and books and the hard earth sheltering what’s coming in the spring, and then the first shoots and lambs and the excitement and the sadness, too, and everything growing, growing. And then summer with richness and plenty and the earth fulfilled—it must be wonderful to live on a farm.”

Tom Bowden’s face creased in a wide smile.

“Here! You be a proper little country maid and no mistake,” he said. “There’s not many young ladies who come here talk like that. Miss Sales, now, she only thinks about profit and return. Give her modern farming equipment and she’s all right. She’ll talk scientific jargon to you all day, but show her the old way and she’ll say you’re not progressive. Ah, well! She’s putting a lot of money into the place when she marries Mr. Luke, so I don’t doubt we’ll see many changes.”

“She is rich?” asked Vicky simply.

Tom nodded glumly.

“Leastways her old man is, and I understand he’s making a handsome settlement so that his only child can play with her new toy.”

“Ah.” Vicky nodded her fair head wisely. “That explains everything.”

“Explains everything?” Tom looked puzzled for a moment.

“Yes, the engagement.
We
were wondering, but of course our cousin is going to improve the farm with his wife’s
dot.
They have arranged it.”

“Now lookee here, m’dear,” said Tom, sounding alarmed. “Don’t you go saying Mr. Luke’s marrying her for her money. That’s the last thing he would do, and I know for a fact he doesn’t like all she means to do when she’s missus here.”

“Don’t you like Miss Sale?” asked Vicky with interest

“It’s not for me to like or dislike Mr. Luke’s lady,” he replied a little primly. “But I do like a woman to know her place.”

“You are sweet!” said Vicky with delight.
“
Tell me, have you been married, Mr. Bowden?”

“Better call me Tom, like all the rest,” he said gruffly. “No, I never was married. The girl I courted was another that wanted to rule the roost, so I broke it off.”

“What was she like?”

“Pretty as a picture when first I knew her. Came to Tavistock with a side-show one Goosey Fair, and all the chaps was mad about her and she chose me. Fair mazed about her, I was.”

“A side-show in a fair? Oh, what did she do? Wind snakes round her neck or walk a tight-rope? Oh, I do think it must have been exciting to fall in love with a lady in a fair.”

“She was the Tattooed Lady,” said Tom reminiscently. “Tat
t
ooed all over she was with a fox and hounds chasing themselves round her middle.”

“How lovely! What else?” Vicky was enraptured.

“Let me see, now. She had a lighthouse on her back and a full-rigged ship, and—but it’s so long ago, it’s hard to remember.”

“You must have been very proud of her,” Vicky said. “It’s not every husband who could say his wife had a lighthouse on her ba
c
k. I don’t know how you could bear to let her go.”

“Ah, well, as I say, she liked to wear the trousers, and that didn’t suit me,” said Tom.

“I expect,” said Vicky thoughtfully, “all that tattooing made her tough.”

He opened his china-blue eyes wide.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you weren’t right, m’dear,” he said slowly. “I never thought of that.”

Luke and the other two were examining Luke’s new heifers. Vicky joined them for a little, then she wandered off by herself to explore the piece of moor which lay beyond the boundary wall. She walked as far as. Monkstor, and climbed on to one of the boulders and stood drinking in the strong air, much as she had done on Plymouth Hoe that morning. She had never seen moorland like this before. The rugged ground broken by distant tors, and sometimes, the brighter green of bog, stretched away into the sky and filled her with that sense of space and freedom which made her want to embrace it all. Somewhere a river ran, chattering over stones and boulders, but she could not see it. Only the reeds would have told her, had she been moor-bred, and an old grey heron which rose, flapping, to alight at some spot further downstream.

Already Douai and the small, cramped apartment in the Rue Voltaire seemed another life. For Vicky, always, where she was there must reality be. So much to do and see now, and a long English summer ahead. With a glad shout, she sprang off the boulder and raced headlong back to the farm. Luke found her at tea-time, sitting on the floor of the living-room with half his books strewn around her.

“You have so much I haven’t read,” she said, barely raising her eyes from the book on her knee. “I’ll be able to feast, and sometimes perhaps it will be wet and then I can sit in all day and no one will say: ‘Vicky, you should be out instead of with your nose stuck in a book.’
”

“I’m afraid it’s very often wet on Dartmoor, so you should have ample opportunity.” He laughed, and glanced over her shoulder to see what she had found.
“
Wuthering
Heights
...
are you a Bronte lover?”

“I’ve only read
Jane Eyre
,”
she said. “We’ve read all the French classics over and over again, of course, but really it’s better to read the English ones in the original. Miss Crump and Miss Trumpington had Dickens and Scott and Thackeray and Jane Austen in the school, of course, but Papa sold most of his books when Pauline was ill and the doctor’s bills were so heavy, so we were rather limited by what we could get. But now I can really catch up on my reading.”

He sat on the arm of a chair, watching her.

“Why did your father never write to me before, Vicky?” he asked a little shyly. “I would have been only too pleased to help in any way. I don’t like to think of you being short of money.”

She looked up swiftly and her face was warm with affection for him.

“Oh, but he would never trouble you unnecessarily,” she said gently. “We could always manage, and Marthe was an excellent housekeeper, you know. It was only now, when Papa couldn’t be with us and Marthe must visit her old parents in the South before they die, that he thought perhaps you would not mind a visit.”

“I’m very glad to have you,” he said. “And when you go back again we must come to some arrangement so that I will know you’ll call upon me if I ever should be needed.”

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, and she jumped up and flung her arms round his neck.

“You are good,” she cried. “Luke—the gentle one—the physician. He was always my favorite apostle.” She curled up in the chair beside him. “Look—this description of the moor in
Wuthering Height
s
—it’s like this moor. I have been there this afternoon and sniffed it into me.”

“Well, that was a Yorkshire moor, but yes, the feeling is the same,” he replied. “So you like the moor, do you, Vicky?”

“Like it?” she repeated, considering. “No. Love it, fear it, perhaps hate it, b
ut
never like it.”

“Yes, that’s how I feel,” he said, and taking the book from her, opened it at random and began to read aloud.

Through tea and again through supper they discussed books, and after Corky had brought coffee in the evening they pored together over the shelves, taking out this book and that and ignoring the chatter of the others. The telephone rang out in the hall, and Hester said: “I’ll go,” returning a moment later with a brief: “For you, Luke. Diana.”

Luke straightened his
back
.

“Oh, lord!” he said. “I told her father I would ring her. I
cl
ean forgot, and so did you.”

He went out of the room, and Pauline said conversationally:

“He has not the look of a man in love.”

Hester, bent over some darning, raised her head for a moment and looked over h
e
r glasses.

“
I
shouldn’t say that sort of thing to Diana if I were you,” she remarked.

“But I did not mean to be rude,” said Pauline, distressed. “It’s true, isn’t it, Vicky?”

“Tom Bowden has explained it,” said Vicky carelessly.

‘Tom?” Hester’s tones were a little sharp. “I hope you haven’t been discussing Luke’s private affairs with his foreman, Vicky.”

“No, no,” said Vicky. “It was only something he said in passing.”

“All the same,” persisted Pauline, who disliked being misunderstood, “what I said is only the truth. Why, when Marthe’s
fiancé
came to see her he was red, then white, and his voice shook and he looked at her with love.”

“Who looked at who with love?” asked Luke, coming back into the room. “Is this your elderly admirer again, Vicky?”

“Oh, no,” said Vicky quickly, forestalling her sister. “We were speaking of Marthe’s
fiancé
—the one who went off and married someone else. He would tremble when Marthe looked at him, and sometimes he would seize her and kiss her, and sometimes he would be driven to distraction by her.”

Luke looked amused.

“It sounds a rather uncomfortable state to be in,” he said, flinging himself into a chair.

“Love is not comfortable,” said Vicky severely. “It isn’t meant to be.”

“Listen to the child!” laughed Luke. “What does she think she knows about such things? That impassioned condition is for the very young, Vicky, I’m glad to say.”

“Oh, no, Cousin—I mean, Luke,” she replied. “It’s how you’re made and who you happen to love. Why, even Papa Dupont was quite impassioned.”

“He used to call Vicky his little dove and stroke her hair,” giggled Pauline.

“Sounds like a dirty old man to me,” grunted Luke, and Hester said:

“I think you’re all talking a great deal of nonsense. Vicky, if you’ve finished with the books, put them back on their shelves, dear child.”

“Why,” asked Luke, idly pursuing the subject, “did Marthe’s love-lorn young man leave her if he was so enamored?”

“Well of course.” Vicky, from the book-case, spoke with her back to them. “Marthe was years and years older than he was, and she wouldn’t agree to a wedding date as I told you last night, but I suspect too it was because she was too busy and wouldn’t let him run his own affairs—like Tom Bowden’s tattooed lady at the fair.”